The United States has a long history of excluding foreigners on the basis of race and religion, and Americans always have been profoundly ambivalent about immigration. At times they have been comfortable with diversity and confident in their ability to assimilate newcomers, while at other times they have worried about national unity and frightened of foreigners almost to the point of paranoia.
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The Swiss experience is very instructive for the role of the free movement of persons in the upcoming Brexit negotiations. It is much easier to grasp the importance of migration in these negotiations if the control over somebody’s migration is understood as a valuable right. Brexit is the attempt to take back these rights from the European citizens without any compensation in turn. Most probably, that will not work out.
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In Switzerland, there is currently a discussion on taxing immigrants (well make them pay a fee, not really a tax: “Zuwandererabgabe”) as a means to reduce/regulate immigration. The intuition is straightforward: immigrants cause costs to the country of destination (infrastructure, environment), and we can recover at least some of the expenses from them.
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Trumping over the US election campaign is also a visa dispute at the WTO. On trial stands a bill by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services to double application fees for H1-B visa. India brought its complaint before the WTO on March 2016, alleging that the US had breached its legally binding market access commitments. The US-India dispute could set a precedent if it were to confirm the WTO’s judicial competence over visa – traditionally considered a national prerogative.
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